John Simpson, Father of Maria Susanna, Lady Ravensworth

The man in red is John Simpson, of Bradley Hall, a leading family in County Durham, in the north of England. Angelica Kauffmann painted him in 1773, during her years in London. That same year his daughter Maria Susanna was born. She married Thomas Liddell in 1796, and when he was made Baron Ravensworth in 1821 she became Lady Ravensworth, which is why the museum's title names Simpson through her. His clothes are deliberately old-fashioned. The slashed red sleeves and the lace collar and cuffs copy the fashions in Anthony van Dyck's portraits from more than a century before, a costume Kauffmann gave to many of her male sitters. The Belvedere sees in the fluid brushwork the lessons of her close friend Joshua Reynolds, the leading English portraitist of the day.